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South African Jews Demand President Condemn Alleged Bombing Attempt at Jewish Center
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Chatsworth, South Africa, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rogan Ward
South Africa’s Jewish community has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to condemn a recent alleged attempted bombing of a Jewish community center in Cape Town, decrying his silence on the global surge in antisemitism following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last year.
The local Cape Town branch of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), the umbrella group of the country’s Jewish community, released a statement last Friday saying that an “improvised explosive device” had been thrown over the front wall into the community center and “failed to detonate.”
No one was hurt and no damage was caused in the incident. The facility, located in the neighborhood of Gardens, reportedly contains offices for many Jewish community organizations, including a women’s group, a youth movement, and a Jewish newspaper, among others.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis confirmed earlier this week that city police were helping the South African Police Service (SAPS) investigate the matter and analyze closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage to find the perpetrator. He added that the case has been handed to South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, known as the Hawks.
“We have evidence showing the perpetrators committing the act, and all available evidence has been handed over to the authorities,” Cape SAJBD executive director Daniel Bloch told the South African Jewish Report.
However, Hill-Lewis said that law enforcement had not yet determined the nature of the device.
“Should the SAPS investigation confirm that this was an attempted attack on the Jewish Community Center, I know I would speak for all Capetonians in condemning such an attempt in the strongest possible terms,” the mayor said in a statement. “Cape Town is a city of peace-loving people, where differences of faith and opinion are expressed loudly and fully, but always peacefully.”
Amid the investigation, SAJBD national director Wendy Kahn on Thursday shared a statement with The Algemeiner demanding South African President Ramaphosa condemn the alleged bombing attempt, noting he has been silent on the incident for a week.
“This was an act of antisemitism aimed at the Jewish community, whether intended to intimidate or to cause physical harm. It was an illegal act that constitutes a hate crime,” Kahn said. “This incident is concerning not only to South African Jewry, but also to the greater South African society and has garnered much global attention. Arson and bomb attacks against Jewish institutions have become sadly commonplace in other parts of the world, but this is the first time in many years that a Jewish communal facility in South Africa has been targeted.”
The apparent bombing attempt occurred on the same day that arsonists heavily damaged a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, in what both law enforcement and political leaders called an antisemitic attack.
“The Mayor of Cape Town, the SA Police Services, and now the Hawks have approached the situation with the extreme gravity that it deserves. However, nearly a week later, there has still been no word of condemnation nor any expression of support for South Africa’s Jewish community from President Ramaphosa,” the SAJBD statement continued. “This is not the first time that events that have directly affected the SA Jewish community have been met with silence from the presidency.”
Kahn called Ramaphosa’s silence “all the more perplexing” given how other world leaders have stood with their Jewish communities when they have experienced threats.
“Our own country’s elected president, however, has, in nearly a week, failed to condemn this incident,” the statement concluded. “A year ago, on Dec. 13, the Jewish communal leadership met with the president to express concerns about growing antisemitism that was spiraling in our country, and to call for him to speak out against this hate. A year later we are again forced to call on our president to speak out against this violent attack clearly aimed at our community.”
The South African Jewish community has repeatedly lambasted Ramaphosa and his ruling African National Congress (ANC) for insufficiently combating antisemitism and being one of the harshest critics of Israel since the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state last Oct. 7 and launched the war in Gaza.
For the past year, the South African government has been pursuing its case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza. In late October, South Africa filed the bulk of the relevant material to support its allegations, a move that the SAJBD slammed as a demonstration of “grandstanding” rather than actual concern for those killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.
South Africa temporarily withdrew its diplomats from Israel and shuttered its embassy in Tel Aviv shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom, saying that the Pretoria government was “extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians” in Gaza.
Then in December, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.
In May, members of South Africa’s Jewish community protested Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor’s call for students and university leaders to intensify the anti-Israel demonstrations that have engulfed college campuses across the US.
Later that month, Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Ramaphosa’s ANC has also supported a proposal by the City of Johannesburg to rename the street on which the US Consulate is located after notorious Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled, who hijacked a Tel Aviv-bound plane in 1969 and attempted another hijacking, this time of an El Al flight, in 1970.
The government’s ardent opposition to Israel did not help its performance in elections earlier this year, when the ANC lost its majority in parliament for the first time in South Africa’s post-apartheid democratic history. However, it still remained the largest party and retained power at the national level through a coalition.
While Ramaphosa has not commented on last week’s alleged bombing attempt at the Jewish community center in Cape Town, he has continued speaking against Israel. In a message posted to X/Twitter on Thursday, the South African president falsely described the Israeli military campaign against Hamas terrorists as “Israel’s war on the people of Gaza,” comparing it to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The post South African Jews Demand President Condemn Alleged Bombing Attempt at Jewish Center first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.